Bees See Red - To Be Read Is to See

   Bees like red. I move all the red items (the plastic buckets, the ice cooler, my cup) to the far end of the table. But there are so many things that are red or contain splotches of red. I can’t do it to everything. My pen is red. My chair is red. The covers of all my books have a lot of red. My bookmarks are red. The bees are still buzzing examining every splotch of red to see if it may contain any nectar. I discover that if I kill a few and arrange their carcasses around me then that will keep their sisters away or so it seems. They are not that easy to swat. They don’t stay put long enough for my apoidea cemetarium.

Only fools and charlatans know and understand everything – Anton Chekhov

97% of Afghanistan’s GNP is derived from US and other foreign sources

Narrative gives us the world, but inexorably it gives us a false world – Michel Butor – Inventory, 1968  p16

The smell of camphor – mothballs. The previous campers must have been unpacking their woolen wear I though. The neighbor complained about the  smell. I don’t come to the woods to smell mothballs. When I pitched camp I thought there were just a few, but they form a ring all around the site. Snakes, I was told. People scatter them about to keep the snakes out. A fresh box of mothballs scattered on the ground forming a ring. It was supposed to keep the snakes away. What snakes. I hadn’t seen a snake in ages. A few dead ones run over in the road. Maybe it interferes with their Jacobson organ I thought. They can no longer pursue their prey. But their pray would not run out of the woods into an open gravel covered area anyway – away from safety and into a place of danger. It was all nonsense. A lot of campers do it. Besides they (the mothballs not the snakes) are poisonous to the wildlife. I don’t like the woods smelling like the inside of my closet.  Idiotic. Another example of Internet lore. And indeed I was not visited by and snakes in the middle of the night.

The longing for clarity and simplicity in the face of overwhelming complexity is as understandable as it is misguided – Mark C Taylor – Confidence Games: money and markets in a world without redemption, 2004 p1

ISMS:

     Governments: at the cost of everyone for the benefit of a few

     Private Enterprise: at the peril of everyone for the benefit of me

     Socialism: From each according to his ability to each according to his need

     P T Barnhamism: A sucker is born every minute

     Public/Private Partnership:  From each according to his capacity, to each according to his power

     Bourgeoism: From each according to his need to each according to his greed

There are two kinds of saviors: those who want to soothe the soul of the suffering and those who want to heal the sores of the flesh of the suffering – Ngugi Wa Thiongo – Wizard of the Crow, 2007 p94

Science is the religion of democracy

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity – George Orwell – Politics in the English Language. 1946

We accumulate

            Then we die

We stop accreting

Hoarders don’t

They are zombies

Unliving – beyond their time

Out of space

When one hears the phrase ‘intelligent design theorists’, it is perhaps tempting to understand ‘intelligent’ as referring to the theorists themselves – Steven Poole – Unspeak, 2006  p50

85% of college graduates this year will probably move back home

Silver rain condenses in gray around here, puddled / And soaks the wax out of milk cartons trucks have smashed / Flat. Strange neighborhoods are famous for phone poles – John Koethe – Domes, 1973 p37

Olive oil users are 41% less likely to have a stroke than non-olive oil users

Electricity kills darkness, candlelight illuminates it – Roger Deakin – Wildwood, 2007 p13

A replacement is no

            Substitute

Only in economics

            Where they are

            Infinite

And sports where they

            Are limited

Are they the same

Substitutes have an

            Institutional existence

            And must be made

By the rules

Political acts are commonly overdetermined: there are many reasons for them – Steven Poole – Unspeak, 2006  p81

A never incarcerated man has a 14% chance of making it out of the bottom economic quintile. A once incarcerated man as a 2% chance.

A city is the sum of trajectories whose laws are different for drivers and pedestrians – Michel Butor – Inventory, 1968   p36

To think is to lack faith; to have faith is to not to have to think

To congratulate oneself for one’s tolerance is sometimes actively to display distaste – Steven Poole – Unspeak, 2006  p29